SHOCK & AWWW: While Jose Reyes' (above) defense helped the Mets complete a double play in the fifth inning, Bobby Parnell (inset) and the bullpen were in shock after giving up three runs and allowing the Nationals to win 6-2. Photo: Paul J. Bereswill (2)

4/8/11 Washington Nationals Vs. New York Mets at Citi Field Opening Day: Mets Jose Reyes completes a double play to end the fifth inning. (Paul J. Bereswill for The New Yo)

The people, they badly want to believe what Terry Collins is telling them, and selling them. There were 41,075 of them who bought tickets for Opening Day, even if several thousand fewer actually made it to Citi Field. They’ve read all spring about the Mets’ changed culture, their altered approach, their newfound embrace of resilience.

Mets fans are realists, see. They understand, however reluctantly, they aren’t the Phillies. They understand, however grudgingly, they aren’t the Yankees. They understand, however diffidently, the only way to see blue sky again is to grind through the rubble of a failed half-decade.

Mostly, what they want is for Terry Collins’ players to honor their manager’s mantra.

“What I want,” Collins said a few hours before the first pitch of last night’s home opener, “is for a father to walk out of here with his son and say, ‘We’re gonna come back here again, because that’s a team that plays the right way. Win or lose.’ ”

Those fans may still well believe Collins, and they should, because he really has done tireless work trying to make all of this a reality. But those fathers and sons will have to make that return trip based on faith, not hard evidence. Because the 6-2 loss the Nationals handed them looked an awful lot like what we’ve seen littered across the last two seasons.

Across one 3-hour, 13-minute slog of a baseball game, the Collins Mets looked an awful lot like the Jerry Manuel Mets. Looked a little too much like the no-account Mets of 2009 and 2010, right down to the punchless final few innings.

“It’s frustrating, it’s hard, it’s sad,” said R.A. Dickey, who may be the most popular Met right now, who split a nail early in the game and as a result would have had just as much luck trying to get a bowling ball to knuckle as a baseball. “It’s the home opener. You want to be at your best individually. You want to be at your best as a team. I wasn’t. We weren’t.”

There were too many walks; eight of them in all, five by Dickey, two by Bobby Parnell who came in and threw kerosene on the fire during his two-thirds of an eighth inning, entering a tight game and leaving a laugher.

There were too many men left in scoring position: The Mets were 0-for-10, and most troublingly were 0-for-2 in the bottom of the seventh when they had second and third and none out, had up Jose Reyes and Angel Pagan — whom Collins called “an electric pair” before the game. They got one strikeout, one meek grounder and zero runs out of it.

“What it shows,” Collins said later, “is that no matter who’s pitching, hitting is hard.”

The Mets have proven that time and again these past few seasons, and did so again at the worst possible time, because after sparking the optimist inside every one of their fans with a 3-1 start to the season the Mets have now lost three straight games and lost them in ugly fashion by a combined 27-9.

Were there moments to savor? There were. There always are. There was a dynamic double play by Reyes, who prevented the game from spinning out of hand in the fifth inning with a diving stop off a hard smash by Rick Ankiel. There was a splendid running catch in the ninth by Angel Pagan.

The fans seemed appreciative of every morsel of effort. They want to believe. Badly.

All the goodwill accrued during the season’s first week hasn’t evaporated entirely. The Mets have talked splitting the season up series by series, and there’s still a chance to win this series, still a chance for a quality homestand, still a favorable April schedule in which to get themselves above sea level.

And if you believe in Collins, you believe that can happen. You believe there really will be more nights when the good Mets are on display and the bad Mets are kept at bay. It just would’ve been nice if they could’ve traded places on Opening Day.